Saturday, 31 December 2011

Sveta Sotnikova

Entitled, "De Fabrica", Sveta Sotnikova's final year project, and her first brand collection inspired for S/S 12, is a fascination with the construction of the human body. Set the difficult task of using leather; an unforgiving texture with very little room for error, but a welcomed challenge; she explores her fetish for leather, yet more importantly, demonstrates the skilful craftmanship of the London-based designer and delves into a world of darkness to produce cutting edge designs.

Using blue prints - to assist with the pattern design - to construct the hand-crafted pieces is a daring attempt at juxtaposing femininty and the fragility of the leather in search of inner strength and power, notwithstanding the beauty and emphasis of quality. The manipulation and tangible layers of leather gravitates to exposing the most intimate images of restructuring the human form. Forever an unconvetional form of applying architectural design to fashion, this collection's stringent attention to detail appeals to the unconventional woman whose strength is not for the fainthearted.

Images Courtesy of Spindlemagazine.com

Already snapped up by POP PR for her architectural spin on the construction of avant-garde designs, the newly graduate of London College of Fashion is fast heading in the direction of her own inspirational designers of Ricardo Tisci at Givenchy and the new generation of greats for their take on couture like Gareth Pugh and Christopher Kane.

Born in Denmark, the young Dane moved to the UK almost eight years ago to study fashion at Middlesex University. Having firmly settled in the creative and cultural scene, that is London, the flourishing designer’s talent has not gone a miss in the industry, and subsequently gained fashion credential as Assistant Fashion Designer at Preen by Thornton Bregazzi to move on to create a brand that has everyone talking.

Inspired by neon-lit nightlife of Tokyo at the heart of Gaspar Noe’s, ‘Enter the Void’, Malene’s 14 piece collection magnifies a flurry of exquisite colours – electric pinks, canary yellows and opulent turquoise with a flash of black throughout.

Images courtesy of blinklondon.com

With a strong focus on textiles and textures, invisible to the naked eye, the obtrusive use of psychedellic prints - from the scales on a butterflies wings, were clear influences of nature and surrounding environments.

Image courtesy of malebeoddershedebach.com

What has become her signature looks of unusual cut-outs, digital prints and leather pieces with sculpted shoulder and misplaced arms were a direct link with science fiction horror film ‘Videodrome’ by David Cronenberg.

Image courtesy of pushitmagazine.com

Image courtesy of retoxmagazine.com

Image courtesy of businessoffashion.com

With a vibrant vivacious colour palette, unusual cut-outs and digitised prints, the London based designer’s signature style has already gained a strong following from celebrities alike.

Image courtesy of Malene Oddershede Bach facebook.com

Between freelancing as a pattern cutter and working full-time in the city of London, as a Creative Consultant, Malene work ethic is something to admired and clearly inspired by the different environments she finds herself in.

Sunday, 4 December 2011

Take a Walk on the Dark Side with Zyanya Keizer

Images Courtesy of Forestial.com

“Inspired by the armour of insects combined with soft obscurity of a forest by nightfall”, Zyanya Keizer is the dark knight behind the collection entitled, “Ocultos Entre El Bosque” or translated as “hidden in the woods.”

Image Courtesy of FashionBlogAmsterdam.blog.com

Born in Mexico City, the 26 year-old studied at the Fashion Academy in Antwerp. Although she did not gradaute, she finished the collection independently. She presented her first collection during Amsterdam International Fashion Week in January this year. Based on the surrealistic combination of nature and man-made environments, taking inspiration from American artist, Roxy Paine, for his interpretation on human attempts to control the natural creative processes of life, and Mike Libby, another American artist, whose use of insects and technological components to explore the contravention of nature and technology; the young avant garde designer has created a fairytale of dark mysterious but alluring craftsmanship of unconventional yet highly detailed sculptures, in the form of beautiful garments emphasising the human figure, to express her view of reality and fantastical futuristic forest.

Images Courtesy of FashionBlogAmsterdam.blog.com

The young designer delves into the idea of what cannot be seen with the naked eye, but can be sensed by way of intensive detail of iron balls, sequins and carefully hand-stitched patterns, intertwined with leather and sheer textures to assemble inflexibility to exaggerated predictions of allusions to a somewhat unpredictable conclusion that beauty can conquer turmoil and disaster.

Image Courtesy of Coda-Apeldoorn.nl

In the league of Iris Van Herpen, her designs are considered 'works of art'. An impressive expression of structural and architectural quality and her use of using diverse fabrics and materials screams an inviting imagination of a functional ready-to-wear collection.

Image Courtesy of xxlafamigliaxx.blogpsot.com

Winner of the UK's prestigous fashion design competition Project Catwalk in 2006, British designer Kirsty Doyle's S/S 12 collection is every inch of sophistication and elegance, but with a contemporary twist.

Image Courtesy of Liverpool Daily Post

The young designer's S/S 12 collection is a sophisticated woman enjoying the elegance of the summer, dressed in dark magneta's, bisque and whites and grafik wild prints in beautifully origami inspired with loose cannon drapings supported with fine detailing of 'pretty in pink' and 'the colour of purple' bows to emphasise the classic feminine silhouette.

Image Courtesy of Kirsty Doyle on Facebook

A graduate from Liverpool John Moores University and the world class Central St Martins, Kirsty Doyle is every bit an entrepenneur. She independently made a name for herself from selling at a Liverpool craft market to securing and establishing an aspirational brand as part of the largest state-of-the-art retail complex - Liverpool ONE.